Healthcare and IT experts convened on Capitol Hill this week to warn Congress that as healthcare organizations are increasing the use of electronic medical records in light of federal mandates, they are not protecting these records within the database and elsewhere. Security professionals agree that in order for the public to trust these records, healthcare organizations need to start working on database security best practices -- the same first-order practices that any organization with minimal security should start with to shore up sensitive data stores.

According to McGraw, even with certain safe harbor incentives in place for organizations to be exempt from costly breach notifications if exposed data is encrypted, statistics show that healthcare organizations are still not encrypting their data.

"The new breach notification provisions of HITECH provide an incentive for health care providers to encrypt health information using standards approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)," he said. "But we know from the statistics on breaches that have occurred since the notification provisions went into effect in 2009 that the health care industry appears to be rarely encrypting data."